Yellow Line Champion Deathstorm Build
By Araphorn
Table of Contents
Introduction
Welcome, here you will find a really good build for Yellow Line AoE Champion for Minas Morgul expansion, tuned for max Area of Effect DPS. Update 26 bought a 20% buff to Champions, which made its AoE even stronger, making it the top sustainable AoE DPS in the game.
Yellow Champion is pretty easy to get the hang of, the cooldowns on AoE skills are somewhat long, which gives you lots of flexibility to do other things, such as even doing a little bit of Single-target damage when AoE skills are down. Also there is a fair bit of weapon swapping involved, you have to use Dual-wield for certain skills and 2-hander for certain skills too. This will be explained in the Rotation section down below.
Yellow Champion is usually not taken into some certain bosses of the Raid, due to not being any need of AoE DPS, but bosses which do require AoE, Yellow Champ is always taken.
Stat Goals
*This applies to all levels, from 0 to 130.
Yellow Champ’s primary role is DPS, their stat goals should be:
Physical Mastery > Critical Rating > Vitality > Finesse
(These stats are acquired from Essences, Virtues, LIs, etc.)
With Endgame gear and correct placement of Essences, Virtues and so on, Yellow Champ unbuffed stats should be around:
- Physical Mastery at ~800K
- Critical Rating at ~580K
Aim for those 2 stats at that level, so with a Red Captain in group, you’ll be able to cap both, Mastery and Critical. That is the most efficient way to build your Champion. Some Essence slots might still be available after reaching Mastery and Critical Rating Stat goals, then the remaining slots can be used on Vitality Essences.
* While you are gearing up, remove all Essences from your current Gear, and then slot Essences as per the Stat goals. After you have met the Stat goals, then place the right Virtues (more down on that down below). This way you can plan your setup better, and utilize Essences perfectly, and can dump the remaining Essences in Vitality or other Stat of your choice after meeting Stat goals mentioned above.
Gear
The new Armour Set from Remmorchant Raid is current Best in Slot (BiS). It is called the ‘Scything Blades’ set. It reduces the cooldown of Great Cleave by 30s. You can use 4 pieces of that set, and 2 pieces of the Red-line set for the extra 5,000 Might.
If you don’t have any Raid pieces, go for the T1 Armor until you get the Raid set. Use Essences till you meet the Stat Goals, as listed above, 800k Mastery, 580k Critical (Capped Virtues help a lot).
These are my unbuffed stats in Yellow Line, by using 4x Yellow Line Set and 2x Red Line set. Please note that these stats/morale are high because all my Virtues are capped. If you don’t achieve these stats, replace the Vitality essences (down below) till you reach ~800K Physical Mastery and ~580K Critical rating.
Here is the Armour in detail:
That is my Armour and Essences combination. By using this setup, I reach my Stat Goals, and pretty much Cap all my stats when grouped with a Captain, while having a very nice Morale pool.
Here are the Jewels:
- Earrings: Shadowed King T5
- Pocket: Thrang T2
- Necklace, Bracelets and Rings: Amdân Dammul (New WotTP Raid)
Special Trigger Essences to use:
You need both of these as a must, you can place them wherever you like.
Trait Trees
I use 2 different Trait Trees for Yellow Line, depending on the fight/scenario.
This Tree I use for pretty much all Instances/Raids. This gives me the Max AoE DPS, and great Single-target DPS utility from Red Line.
Next, my second Tree is more for Landscape or power-leveling someone in Warg Pens/Sword Halls, as I trait for Killing Spree, which restores 10% morale on every mob killing blow.
Use these Trees depending on what you are doing.
Virtues
These are the virtues I use to reach the Stat Goals. You can play around with these to get the numbers you want, but I would not recommend using any Mits virtues (apart from Fidelity) as you don’t gain much from them. You can swap around, depending on the fight, can swap in more Morale ones in for example, Honour for Determination, it just depends on the fight.
By using these Virtues, I reach my Stat Goals, while still maintaining a good Morale pool.
- Valour (Best DPS virtue for Physical classes)
- Zeal (Best DPS virtue for Might classes)
- Confidence (Best Critical Rating virtue for all classes)
- Loyalty (Great for Morale all classes)
- Determination (Decent DPS virtue for Might classes) (Usually my number 5 is placeholder, I swap this one a lot depending on the fight)
Legendary Items
These are a bit tricky, especially for Champs. To cut a long story short, you need 3 LIs for Yellow Line. My Dual-wield Swords are shared with Red Line also, to keep things simple. But, you need a separate 2-Hander LI just for Yellow Line, and you need a seperate LI Rune for Yellow Line also. Here is my setup for Yellow Line:
These 4 weapons I use, and how, which I will explain in Rotation Section.
Swap Legendary Items
I use 2 Swap LIs on Champ.
- Weapon is used as a swap for the following skills:
- Sprint Duration
- Fear Nothing Cooldown
- Hamstring Duration
- Rune is used as a swap for:
- Great Cleave Duration (This adds 10s to a 30s buff, making the 25% AoE damage boost last 40s)
- Added a Mounted Combat Bridle LI for reference too.
Rotation
Here is what I do on Yellow Champ:
- To begin, I would recommend you Hotkey/Keybind your Dual-wield weapons and 2-Hander.
- There are certain skills you want to hit with certain weapons. These are:
- Wild Attack, Blade-wall, Raging Blades, Fury of Blades, Blade Storm, Feral Strikes (Only for corruptions) only to be used from Dual-wield.
- Rend, Ferocious Strikes, Brutal Strikes, Swift Blade, only to be used from a 2-Hander.
- Start your rotation with Wild Attack to get your 5% crit chance up. If it doesn’t crit, don’t stop, just keep rotation going, use Wild Attack again soon to get that buff up.
- After WA, use Rend to debuff your target(s) and for an AoE bleed on all.
- Now that your WA buff is up, and your target(s) are debuffed, now it’s time to start using spenders. (If your tank has lined up all the mobs, use cooldowns such as Great Cleave/Heroics/Controlled Burn)
- Start with Horn of Gondor – Battle Frenzy – Fury of Blades – Swift Blade – Raging Blades-Clobber – Blade Wall. These are your spenders and big hitters.
- When those are on Cooldown, keep Wild Attack crit chance up (It lasts for 10s and it helps if you can track it via a plugin)
- Now that all your AoE skills are on cooldown, and you have refreshed your WA buff, now it’s time to swap to 2-hander and start using some Single-target damage skills.
- You can use a combo of Ferocious-Clobber-Brutal. Once that is done, refresh Rend while with 2-hander equipped and swap back to Dual Wield and repeat the AoE rotation again (number 3 on the list here)
- Mostly, Yellow Champ is all about keeping all your Spenders (Raging/Fury and Blade Wall as much as possible on cooldown, and managing your buffs simultaneously, this can take some practice but you will eventually get the hang of it. Cut Raging Blades Animation with Clobber always, if the encounter doesn’t require interrupts.
- Here’s a video of Yellow Champ in action:
Consumables
There are the consumables I use on Champ:
- Crafted 10s Horn. These are invaluable for Instances/Raids, your group will always ask for these, so keep them with you. (You can only use ones which say ‘Most effective against targets of your level or lower.’)
- Fervour pots. These are great for the instant 5 Fervour and Dev Magnitude for big hits. I typically use them only while I’m heavily buffed or if there is an Oathbreakers on the boss.
This is the Food I use:
Updated as of U28.
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